Court Hears New Details in Series of Pacoima Rapes

A paroled sex offender accused of raping three Pacoima schoolchildren used a weapon to intimidate his victims and blindfolded them before taking them to a vacant condominium where he sexually assaulted them, sometimes repeatedly, a detective testified Wednesday.

The new details about a series of rapes that set off a parental panic in August emerged as Ronald Lee Donaldson faced a preliminary hearing in San Fernando Municipal Court.

Donaldson, 34, who allegedly accosted and raped two Pacoima girls and a boy, ages 11 to 16, on their way to school, returns to court today, where Judge Roy M. Carstairs will decide whether he will stand trial on 24 sex counts involving the three Pacoima children and two others from Inglewood. The alleged victims ranged in age from 9 to 16.

According to the Pacoima children’s stories--recounted Wednesday in court by a Los Angeles police detective--Donaldson allegedly covered their eyes and heads with caps or cloth hats, led them to the patio of a vacant condominium, then raped them.

The victims recounted being accosted from behind by a man who pressed them with a cold metal object. But they told police they did not see the weapon and could not say whether it was a knife, gun or other object, Detective Diane Webb testified.

Webb told the court that on occasion Donaldson made conversation with his young victims. He told one victim, a 16-year-old who looked younger, that “people thought he (Donaldson) was ugly and he couldn’t get a job,” Webb said. After the Aug. 21 attack, the officer said, “he asked to meet her again.”

When the 16-year-old victim resisted performing a sex act, saying, “You’ll have to kill me first,” Donaldson laughed at her, Webb testified.

The very next morning, according to testimony, Donaldson grabbed an 11-year-old girl by the neck, telling her, “Don’t turn around or I’ll kill you.”

He allegedly walked her back to the same condo complex, where he undressed her and raped her.

Nine days after the first attack, an 11-year-old boy who lived in the condo complex was sodomized by a man he said asked him, “Do you want to make five bucks?” according to testimony.

In the alleged attacks, the victims lost personal items that were never recovered. For example, the 16-year-old girl told police Donaldson took a gold chain from her. The 11-year-old told police she never saw her Tasmanian Devil T-shirt again.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacquelyn Lacey said she suspects Donaldson might have kept personal items from his victims as “trophies.” But she said police never found the items because he left Pacoima before he was caught. He was finally arrested near a school in Inglewood on Oct. 20. Donaldson, who is being held in protective custody on $2-million bail, was on parole for a 1982 rape conviction at the time of the alleged attacks. He had served more than nine years of a 16-year sentence for raping three boys in the same Pacoima neighborhood where the new attacks occurred.

At the time of his arrest, Donaldson’s early release from prison was criticized as a flaw in the justice system by parole and law enforcement officials.